Advertising on LinkedIn for Small Business

LinkedIn marketing is perhaps the best platform for B2B marketing. If you’re trying to target professionals, businesspeople, or other companies, advertising on LinkedIn is the right choice.

In this article, we’ll go into more depth about advertising on LinkedIn and different ways to get the most out of this unique social media marketing platform. Sponsored content and text ads are the most common advertising options, however, there is also Sponsored InMail, Dynamic ads, and Display ads. We’ll talk more about those later.

Choosing Your Audience

Like any social media marketing, choosing your audience is absolutely key. One benefit of LinkedIn advertising is that you can target very specific groups of people relating to jobs and companies. Like other social media platforms, you can choose demographics, ages, skills, interests, location, and education (amongst others), but you can also target professional characteristics as well. Things like job titles, level of seniority, roles, experience – these specific targets allow you to get the most qualified leads.

Once you’ve chosen your target audience, you can also use the option Audience Expansion to widen your net. This option will choose similar target audiences that you can include that you may not have thought of.

LinkedIn Ads: Sponsored Updates

Sponsored updates are similar to boosted posts on Facebook, albeit with some small differences. They appear on a user’s newsfeed among other posts from pages or people they are connected to. Through the Campaign Manager, you can choose to sponsor an existing update from your company page or showcase page, or create a new update.

If you choose to sponsor an existing update, you can’t edit it or make any changes. If you create a new one, you can customize it to only be seen by your specific target audience. You can create variations of the advertisements, choosing different photos, text, or titles to see which get the best results. You can also have sponsored updates that link to a website or landing page, or have users click to Follow your company page. Sponsored updates are a great way to spark conversation and engagement with a new audience.

The LinkedIn Campaign Manager makes it easy to toggle which ad variations you want to turn on and off once you determine which are performing the best. Track your results easily to ensure you get the best ROI for your LinkedIn ads.

LinkedIn Ads: Text Ads

Text ads are smaller than sponsored updates and appear on the side of the page. You can have them link to a LinkedIn company page, showcase page, landing page, or your website. It’s always best if you have a tailored, specific landing page for those visiting from LinkedIn. Most users on LinkedIn are industry professionals, and they will appreciate a unique web browsing experience if you link them to a unique homepage.

Text ads include a title, a short description, and a small (50×50) photo. If you’re trying to simply build brand awareness, using your company logo is sufficient. However, if you’re looking for a higher clickthrough rate, according to LinkedIn, using an image with people is the best way to achieve that.

Like sponsored updates, you can create different variations and toggle your advertisements to only use the ones that give you the highest ROI. Cycling through various ad copies targeting different audiences will help you find the right people, tone, image, and links to use.

Unlike sponsored updates, you can create a text ad from a personal account that isn’t linked to a company or showcase page. You can simply have these text ads link to a landing page or website if your business doesn’t have a company page.

Creating a Budget for Your LinkedIn Ads

Because it offers more targeting options, advertising on LinkedIn does have a higher cost than Twitter and Facebook. For your campaigns, you can choose either a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPI). CPC is usually at least two dollars –higher than a lot of other platforms. The CPI is per 1000 impressions. It depends if you want to pay for results (CPC) or simply pay for exposure (CPI).

When choosing your budget, you should budget for around 100 clicks per day. LinkedIn tells you the average CPC for your targets and industry so you can make an accurate estimate.

Another great tool that LinkedIn provides is Lead Collection. When users click on your ad, they’re able to send you their contact information without ever leaving your page. This way, you’re able to clearly manage and contact your leads and measure the success of various advertisements.

If you’re looking for LinkedIn marketing management, VivosWeb can help. Contact us today for all types of social media management, including LinkedIn.

VivosWeb is a full service digital marketing agency located in the heart of Hamilton, ON. Our professional marketing team has significant experience developing websites for all markets and at a variety of price points.